First UK D6 IOM hits the water

[Paul Barton]

Thursday 16 December saw the pre production prototype D6 reach the water for the first time. Winds were very very light but the early indications are that the boat is very well balanced. The boat is currently some 200g underweight and we don't anticipate any issues in getting production boats to 4kg with a little ballast. The pre production boat is considered a trials boat and will not be for sale at any stage. batch 1 boats will be white.

Rigs - the trial boat is currently sailing on modified Sedici Rigs and apart from some minor modification of the gooseneck and cutting the mast to fit the deck stepped arrangement

A product update. Our plan is to have 6 fully finished boat hulls, inc fin and ballast, by the end of January 2022. These are not kit boats but fully finished boats ready for electronics and rigs. We have 6 hulls at 60% complete at this time and by the end of Dec should have all 3d printing for this first batch complete. 

Boat 1 - Paul Barton

Boat 2 - Brian Tanner

Boat 3 - Julian Richards

Boat 4 - available end Jan 2022 - £850

Boat 5 - available end Jan 2022 - £850

Boat 6 - available end Jan 2022 - £850

Batch 2 will be 10 boats and should be available by 1 April

[Eric Finley]

Paul

Any feed back as yet how this project is progressing?

How many of these are now registered and racing?

What range of abilities are the current Skippers and how different are the performances between them?

How accurate does setup need to be to obtain good boat speed? Or is the boat quick with wide setup range?

Thanks Eric

[Paul Barton]

Hi Eric, quick update. I delivered a fully built boat yesterday and there are several boats being built in kit form. I've several kits available. There are none registered in the UK at present but several in NZ. I've not done as much club level racing as I'd like because I'm busy with this project. However, on one recent club race day I saw the potential of this design and won two races straight off and was often in the top 3 boats throughout the day. I was racing against a range of modern designs including K2, Kantun S, MX20, MX16 and a few older designs. The setup question is very pertinent as it took me some time to get the setup right and interestingly the mast ram provided the final bit of tuning. The potential of this boat is huge but the big issue is that the hull, as it comes off the printer, takes too much effort to finish. Glass cloth, resin and filler are used at present and I'm about to begin experimenting with 2 pack Polyurethane as a finish coat. The biggest issue we have right now is the lack of suitable winches. I've 3 orders waiting for RMG winches.